Career Lessons6 min read
The Cheapest Place To Be Wrong
The AI headcount debate has been asking the wrong question, and the answer to the right one is a place where people are allowed to be wrong.
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Co-founder & COO · Venture Builder · Ex-EY Partner
From AI ambition
to operating reality.
I help leaders and teams turn AI ambition and business strategy into things that work, whether you are transforming how a consultancy delivers or building the venture yourself: ventures, platforms and operating models, not slide decks. It is what I do day to day, built on what I learned over more than a decade at EY.
What I write and speak about
Six themes. One thread.
Every topic connects to the same question: how do you move from ambition, strategy and technology to something that actually works in practice?
Latest thinking
Featured insights
About Alex
Four worlds, one consistent question.
I have spent my career moving across four connected worlds: consulting, innovation, venture building and AI-enabled operations. The same question has run through all of them. How do you turn ambition into something real?
From becoming a Consulting Partner at EY, to founding EY Growth Solutions and running the MBRIF Innovation Accelerator, to building and operating Infinite PL across KSA, UAE and beyond.
Read the full story2005–2021
Consulting Partner
IBM, then EY Consulting Partner, UK & Middle East. Government, digital, innovation & growth.
2015–2021
Intrapreneurship
Innovation and asset-based consulting. Founded EY Growth Solutions and led the MBRIF Innovation Accelerator (25+ startups).
2021–Present
Consulting Co-founder and Venture Building
Co-founder and COO at RAI Digital. Built and scaled Infinite PL, a logistics technology venture.
2024–Present
Agentic AI
Helping leaders move from AI ambition to operational transformation.
Escape the deck
AI has not killed consulting. It has killed consulting without outcomes.
What has gone is the part of consulting that was only ever a nicely formatted opinion. What survives delivers real, owned outcomes and builds AI into how it works. Whether you are moving from advice to outcomes, rebuilding how your firm delivers, or you are the buyer done being handed slides, the move is the same. I built a short, honest check to show you where you stand.
Escaping the deck means escaping advice-only work, not consulting: it is consulting with outcomes and AI built in.
Tools & resources
From thinking to action.
Practical frameworks, checklists and canvases for people building ventures, leading AI transformation and reshaping consulting around AI and outcomes.
Are You Ready to Escape the Deck?
A five-minute readiness check: twelve honest questions on outcomes, AI leverage, ownership and intent, scored instantly in your browser. It gives you a straight verdict on whether your consulting model still works under agentic AI, and the one move to make next.
Take the readiness checkAgentic AI Operating Model Readiness Checklist
A structured set of questions to work out whether your organisation is genuinely ready to take AI from pilot to operational scale. Built from the agentic AI work we are doing in logistics, covering governance, workforce readiness, workflow integration and accountability.
Coming soonThe New Consulting Transition Map
A practical map for consultants reshaping their work around AI and owned outcomes, and anyone moving into a building or operating role: what transfers, what you have to build and what to watch out for. The guide I wish someone had handed me.
Get the free guideEscape the Deck.
One honest read every fortnight on what agentic AI is doing to consulting, and what to do about it. Whether you are moving from advice to outcomes, rebuilding a firm, or done buying decks. No hype, no theatre.
Escape the Deck
Join free. One useful email a fortnight, and you can leave whenever it stops being useful.